1983). When the child looked at the teacher without any off task or self-stimulatory behavior, the teaching procedure was initiated and the incidental teaching began (McGee et al., 1983). There was also generalization in the study across settings, just as standard incidental teaching, but only modified to aid the severe deficits in the children. The results yielded benefits that are similar to that of standard incidental teaching procedures because if the rapid acquisition and the promotion of generalization (McGee et al., 1983).

At times it is difficult to use prompts when teaching children with ASD new skills because they can be prompt dependent; however, it is difficult to not use any prompts because they are needed to teach the skill. Incidental teaching is a procedure, which aids the children to learn the skills in a natural environment, but there also isn’t a need for continual prompts (Hart and Risley, 1975). McGee et al. (1999) showed that incidental teaching generates less prompt dependency because the teacher prompts them to elaborate on that initiation, rather than starting with a word that was chosen randomly by the teacher that does not hold the child’s interest. It is important to have at least a prompt level system in placed in order to maintain a procedure that is not prompt dependent (McGee et al., 1986). Incidental teaching also generalizes across different settings and people without prompt dependence. The study completed by McGee and Daly (2007) showed that the social phrases learned in their study by the three autistic boys were transferred across different periods and situations without prompts. According to McGee et al. (1999) the strong interest and favor to incidental teaching was due to the need to overcome the generalization issue that occurred in other behavioral interventions.